


Opportunism

by Enthunder (Aya_A_Anderson)



Series: Small Fandom Works [2]
Category: Karneval
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, Middle School (Nai), Slight Age Difference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-17 00:51:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5847487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aya_A_Anderson/pseuds/Enthunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>four little parts (or, how Nai planned to make Gareki kiss him like he means it)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Opportunism

**Author's Note:**

> Gareki (16)/Nai (14). Nai leads a vanilla life. Gareki's becoming increasingly concerned by his own (equally vanilla) libido.

Nai. He can sense it a mile off, the squeaking of overexcited high school girls flocking to fawn over the middle-schooler – soon to be high schooler, Gareki corrected, bitterly, and wouldn’t high school just be even worse, with all those girls around – petting him and touching his hair and giggling all over him like some vile disease. Gareki was barely sixteen, and even he’d had to shake off the brunt of attention when he’d first enrolled at North Circuit, even him, with a personality most commonly described as ‘tragically terrible; and what a waste, with that face.’

He can hear Nai’s excitable voice approaching. Nai’s voice was dangerous. It had to be, for Gareki to find it cute. He was saying something about his older brother Yogi – current bane of Gareki’s existence, that college-student-bastard-constant-interruption of a human being; and Gareki had been able to tolerate him a lot better when their families merely met up for friendly neighbourhood gatherings, before Gareki had started dating his brother.

“Yogi’s having a party tomorrow night! I’ve never really been to a party before, not one like his, my parents usually send me to Grandma’s for the night. But Yogi invites lots of people, and I’m allowed to stay in the house, now, as long as I behave.”

The girls titter and squeal, and Gareki huffs an annoyed sigh into the depths of his locker.

“Where’s the party?” one of the girls asks curiously.

“My house?”

The response is so cute, so genuinely oblivious, so open to predators. The opportunist giggles cutely. “No,” she giggles, _giggles_ , and Gareki slams his locker shut more roughly than the janitor would like. “I mean, where’s your house?”

He can instantly conceive of about fifty reasons why school girls shouldn’t be let into any of Yogi’s parties, especially these days. The older girls had gotten over their Nai infatuation a while ago, and hanging off Yogi meant leaving Nai and Gareki well alone.

“Mei’s asking if we can come!”

“Oh!” cries Nai, brightly, “Cool, let me ask him! My brother, I mean.”

They round the corner, a whole group of them, huddled in a pack around the epicentre Nai, buzzing excitedly as he rummages in his backpack for his phone. And then Nai looks up and sees Gareki, staring, bag slung over one shoulder.

“Gareki!”

Nai’s attention falls away from the girls and his phone to his friend, his boyfriend, and in three months Gareki still hasn’t gotten used to that. His chest still feels weird whenever he thinks about it.

“Oh,” one of the girls says, “You know him. _Him_.”

Nai is hugging him, startlingly warm, and Gareki hugs him back. His fingers dig a little into the back of Nai’s blazer and if the hug’s a little tighter than usual it’s because they haven’t seen each other since Monday, and in Gareki-and-Nai time that’s three days longer than usual.

“Oh,” he hears one girl say, vaguely, “We’ll just go then, haha!”

“No way,” says her friend, “Look at them. Do you think they’re cousins? Do you think they’re _dating_?”

The corridor erupts into a harmonic series of quiet squeaks.

“Nai,” says Gareki, into his hair, “Maybe let go now.”

Nai’s fists tighten in Gareki’s shirt before he darts up, right up, to press a kiss to Gareki’s (cause of death heart attack) cheek.

“Come on,” says a voice more familiar to Gareki, and flicking his eyes up (his lips still buried in Nai’s nice-smelling hair, and he can’t leave it alone now) to see a girl from his English class, looking decidedly uncomfortable. Gareki doesn’t care, beyond a mild sense of discomfort. He just wants them to leave, and as Nai squirms and says a muffled goodbye into Gareki’s uniform shirt, Gareki just holds him tighter.

“Nai. You can’t just go giving out your home address.”

“I wasn’t going to! I was just being nice, they were really nice. You’re lucky to have such nice classmates!”

“They’re not nice,” grumbles Gareki. “Most of them aren’t my classmates, either, don’t get any ideas.”

“What ideas?”

Gareki snorts into Nai’s hair. He’s so small – Gareki had hit an early growth-spurt, and Nai’s nearly two years younger than him besides, so Nai is very small in his arms when they watch movies and fall asleep on the lounge, but it’s a fit they’re used to – Nai squirms again, and Gareki lets him go, and feeling him slip away is like nothing he’s ever felt before. He guesses this is it, the sort of like Yogi always talks about finding when he turns down girl after girl. This stupid sort of feeling, the inexplicable buzz in his chest, he gets whenever he looks at Nai.

“Nothing,” he says.

Nai links his hand through Gareki’s. He has to bend his elbow a bit to link their fingers, and as Gareki passes his thumb over the back of Nai’s hand, he feels him shiver.

***

Yogi was indeed hosting a party, made clear by the three boxes of packaged glow sticks and cases of alcohol in the manor’s back fridge. Gareki would cast aspersions as to how aware Yogi and Nai’s parents were of the matter, but Nai assured him they knew all about it, Yogi had said so, and besides, they were off visiting Karoku at university in Karasuna so it didn’t really matter.

Gareki toes his shoes off in the entryway – habits born of living in a small apartment as a child – and follows Nai into the kitchen. Nai sets himself up on the countertop, legs dangling off the end. His shorts are pulled up a little, marginally widening the gap between shorts and long knee socks, and his thighs are white.

Gareki swallows, and looks away. “So. You’re planning on going to the party.”

“Yep!” Nai beams. “It’ll be fun. Yogi says your cousin Hirato’s coming back for the weekend, too!”

“He’s not my cousin,” says Gareki, more automatically than in protest. Hirato was the cousin of Tsubaki, his… adoptive mother. Or something like it. He frequently babysat Yogi – and still does, or so he would claim – so Hirato would more often stay with them than at Gareki’s. Gareki had his own suspicions as to exactly what Hirato was doing there.

“I like Hirato,” says Nai, as though he hasn’t heard him, “He’s nice. He teaches me spelling, when he’s here.”

Gareki snorts. “You’re a hopeless speller. Someone has to teach you.” Then he feels guilty, and has to ruffle Nai’s hair to show him he doesn’t really mean it.

***

“Nai. You’re drunk. Who gave you alcohol?”

“Wahh... Gareki sounds scary, even scarier than usual!”

“Nai!”

Nai sulks, and presses himself further into Gareki’s arms. Thankfully, there’s no one here to interrupt them – the party’s in full swing outside, Yogi hosting and telling some story with exaggerated motions that has the crowd in stitches. It’s probably not all that funny – they’re all drunk. Nai included. Gareki clicks his tongue, and removes Nai carefully from where he’s plastered against his side.

“Gareki’s mean,” he drawls.

“Who?”

“One of the girls. She said I looked… cute, or something. I think you look cute, Gareki.”

Gareki’s face flares with heat, and he has to look away before he combusts or does something stupid, like telling Nai he likes him. Or something. “Point her out to me,” he says instead. “Giving alcohol to fourteen-year-olds, swear to God.”

“I’d rather stay here, with Gareki. You’re warm…”

“Oi, Nai…”

A great cheer erupts from outside. A cork is popped off a large bottle of champagne. Nai leans into him again, face flushed, looking up at Gareki like he’s everything. Gareki basically loses it, closing the distance between them to kiss Nai.

(With tongue, and everything.)

***

“Nai.”

They’re in Nai’s room. Gareki had kicked a rowdy couple out a few hours earlier, and they’d been there ever since with Nai dozing in his arms. It was pretty much his favourite position to be in, ever; in all this time, his lips hadn’t stopped burning.

“Mm?”

“…”

“Gareki? What’s wrong?”

He feels Nai stir in his arms and quickly tightens his hold, drawing him back closer towards him. “Nothing.”

“Gareki? If you don’t tell me, I won’t know. That’s what Yogi says.”

“I’m sorry. About before. That was… out of line.”

“Before? When you kissed me?”

“…”

“We’ve kissed before,” says Nai, sounding puzzled. “You weren’t upset all those other times.”

Gareki sighs, feeling more foolish than he’s comfortable with. “Those times before weren’t like this time.”

“Because you got hard?”

Gareki groans. Maybe if he buries his face into Nai’s neck for long enough, the world will fall away. But it doesn’t, and now he can feel Nai shaking a little.

“Nai? What’s wrong?”

Nai snorts, and a little laugh escapes him, expanding over the room and lightening it. “No,” he says, “It’s really okay. I liked what Gareki was doing.”

“Nai, god, you can’t just say things like that.”

“I wish,” and Nai lapses into something a little cheekier, as if for once he knows exactly what he’s doing, “I wish Gareki had kept going.”

“You aren’t serious.” Gareki can never tell anymore. Nai was growing up, finding himself, and though he might act like a kid, he’s perceptive. He can read Gareki better than anyone, except perhaps Hirato – and Hirato didn’t count for anything, more snake than human.

Nai kisses him again, and Gareki can feel a greater force behind it. Nai was a good kisser, better than he had any right to be. “I’m very serious. I wish you’d stop holding back on me.”

_You._

Gareki surges forward, capturing Nai’s lips with urgency. He leans into Nai’s slim body, bracing his arms on either side of him, and Nai sort of laughs and kisses him back eagerly, and that’s how making out became a regular thing, after class, at home, in the kitchen in front of Yogi, and especially on movie nights when they fall asleep on the couch.


End file.
